Bob McMullan (Fraser, Australian Labor Party, Parliamentary Secretary for International Development Assistance) Share this | Hansard source

He said that in China to his Chinese counterpart. The foreign minister said that expanding the strategic dialogue to include India was not on the table for the moment. ‘Nothing like that is going to happen anytime soon; we are looking more in a general sense at progressing the relationship,’ he said. Let’s get real. That is the position that the previous government held. We think the relationship with all those countries and the capacity to engage in good relations with them is important. I want to start by talking about Japan and then I want to say something about India.

We have, it is true, a very important relationship with Japan. There is no controversy about that proposition. Everybody who has ever engaged in any foreign policy discussion in Australia knows that the relationship with Japan is as fundamental to Australia’s future, economically, diplomatically and strategically, as any of our other relationships. We share and continue to share a comprehensive strategic security and economic partnership with Japan, and our relationship with Japan is at a historically high level of substance and intimacy. On 9 April, in his ASPI speech, the foreign minister said:

Japan has been our closest and most consistent friend in our region for many years.

Australia and Japan have many things in common, including our shared values, our democratic outlook and our shared regional engagement.

Japan is a key economic, security and strategic partner of central importance.

It does not actually sound like the minister is referring to a country that we are snubbing or ignoring, and of course six cabinet ministers have visited in the first six months. Very soon the opposition will be complaining that too many people are travelling. As soon as the figures come out they will be saying, ‘Too many people are going around the place,’ but today they are saying that there are not enough. Mr Smith has been to Japan twice and he is visiting again in late June. Mr Crean visited very early, in January. Minister Carr, Minister Ferguson, Mr Burke and Minister Wong have visited. The Treasurer is visiting on 13 and 14 June and of course the Prime Minister will visit twice this year, including next week’s dedicated bilateral visit as well as the G8 summit in Hokkaido, to which the shadow minister correctly referred and which we regard as very important. We are very pleased to be invited as an outreach partner by Japan and we will enthusiastically respond. We are going there with concrete propositions to put, consistent with the interest which Japan has shown in the relationship by inviting us.

We have also been actively engaged in the relationship with Korea, which I was pleased the foreign minister did eventually mention but to which he gave no serious consideration. I would like, if time permits, to come back to that, but it is a relationship that I regard as underestimated as a key element in our North-east Asian relationship.

I want to turn to the other relationship to which the shadow minister referred at some length—that with India. I feel rather strongly about this because in 1996 we left our relationship with India on an upward trajectory. It was ignored for a decade and then the previous government suddenly decided they might be able to do something—

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